The Old Way of the Wicked 2
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It is a very easy way, too. You need not trouble yourself about finding the entrance into it, you can find it in the dark; and the path is so exceedingly smooth that you need not exert yourself much to make great progress in it. If you desire to go to heaven, and you ask me what is to be done, why, I am earnest to inform you rightly; but if you ask me what you are to do to be damned, well, nothing at all, it is only a little matter ofneglect. "How shall we escape," says the apostle, "if we neglect so great salvation?" Leave your boat alone, throw out the oars, just sit still and fold your arms, and she will descend to the rapids swiftly enough. The way to total destruction is most easy; but ah! if you would escape, grace must make you work out your own salvation; you must trust in Jesus, and by his grace tug at the oars like a man, for if the righteous scarcely are saved, where shall the ungodly and the wicked appear?
This old way, if you look at it, is the way in which all men naturally run. I called it a popular road, and a crowded road, but, indeed, it is the road ofuniversal human nature. Only put a child on his feet, and leave him alone, and his first footsteps are towards this broad way; he will need no teaching, you shall have no difficulties in training him, he will find out the evil path, and he will run in it, ay, and will delight in it, and unless the grace of God shall turn him, he will continue in it even when he leans upon his staff; and when his hair grows grey, he will still persevere in the old way which wicked men have trodden.
For all that, it is a most unsatisfactory road. Dangerous I should think it must clearly be seen to be, even by those who think the least of it; for since you set out on it, my brother, how many have perished from the way? Look back, I ask you, upon your companions, where are they now? They have gone to the place appointed for all living one by one, and I will ask you now what testimony have they left behind as to the way? When I speak of the pathway to heaven, I can recount a thousand testimonies of dying Christians who have all spoken well of the ways of God. Their unanimous testimony, borne, mark you, in the light of another world, where hypocrisy will be impossible- the unanimous testimony has been, that her "ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." But who ever heard of the testimony of an ungodly man, when dying, to the sweetness of sin, and to the excellence of unholiness? Why, I think I might stake the whole matter upon the testimony of such a one as Byron, a man of gigantic genius, having an experience of the widest kind, who had drank of the bowl of pleasure and of fame to its very dregs; but his testimony put into other words is precisely that of Solomon: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
He became an unhappy man, wearied of life, and died disgusted with all that he had seen. Better far for him had he lived the obscurest believer in Christ, who dying would have exclaimed, "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of life that fades not away."' Let the testimonies, then, of those who have trodden this road, and found it out to be so poor a one, convince you that it is dangerousfor you to tread it; for all along the route you meet with nothing but disappointments. If you wish to spend your money for that which is bread, and your labor for that which truly profits, you will leave this tempting but deceptive pathway, and fly to another road, in which you shall find present comfort and everlasting felicity.
One thing more I want you to notice before I take you away from this old way which wicked men have trodden, and it is this, that here and there,across it, divine mercy has set barriers. Along the road of sin men dash with increasing rapidity every year. It is marvellous the rate at which wickedness will travel when it has once over-mastered all the drags and brakes of common sense and of respect to one's fellows. The course of sin is downhill, and the rate of sinning is every day accelerated. Across the first part of the ungodly man's course God has been pleased to place many chains, and bars, and barricades, and one of those, though it may be but a frail one, is to you, dear hearer, the subject of this morning; you were led here that I might say to you as solemnly as I can, if you are selfish, if you are proud, if you are self-righteous, if you are indulging the lusts of your flesh, you are on the old way which wicked men have trodden, and, for your own sake, stop! The angel of mercy stands before you now, and bids you tarry. Why will you die? Why will you choose a path that even now gives you no rest? Why select a way which hereafter shall fill you with eternal misery? O tarry awhile, and ask yourself whether it be well to fling away your everlasting hope, and ruin yourself for present wilfulness! O pause awhile!
That dead child at home lies in your pathway like the dead Amasa, who, as he lay weltering in his blood, made an army pause. That sickness of yours from which you have just recovered, that loss of property which has made you so sorrowful, that dire affliction which you see in a beloved wife, all these are bars and chains - will you overleap them, will you go as fast as you can to hell? Oh, sorry exertion for so miserable an end! No,
but let mercy arrest you. God's hand is put upon the bridle now, he reins up your horse; he thrusts back the steed upon its haunches; man, will you heed your Maker, will you let your conscience listen to his voice? Stop on the plains of mercy. If you break through this warning, you may have another and another, but the further the road is traveled the fewer the barricades and the impediments become, until the last part of that tremendous road which leads down to death is all smooth as glass, and a soul may take a dreadful glissade, as down the steep sides of an Alpine mountain, and so glide into hell without the soul being disturbed.
The Lord may give you up, and then, like the train of which we read the other day in the newspapers, when the engine had become overpowered by the weight, and the brakes were of no further use, the whole will run down the tremendous decline to destruction. God permits the last end of many men be just such an awful descent. Oh, for God's sake put the breaks on this morning, for Christ's sake I beg you seek to arrest the growing force of your lusts, its growing tendency towards evil, and may his Spirit make use of the words which the text has suggested to us, to come to a dead halt, and to be saved by faith in Jesus!
II. We come now to say a little concerning THE END: "They were cut down before their time; their foundation was overthrown with a flood." The end of these ancient travelers was that the flood came and swept them all away. It is a parallel case to the end of all ungodly men. I do not intend, however, to detain you long upon the terrible subject, but only to utter these few words. The end of these travelers was not according to their unbelief, but according to the despised truth. They would not believe Noah, but the flood came. You may reject the testimony of God's Bible, you may despise the daily warnings of God's ministers, but the result will be as we have said. God is bound to make true his threatenings as well as hispromises. His people bear witness that he has never lied to them in a single gracious word, and you may be sure he will never lie to you if you persevere in your sin: every single threatening word will be fulfilled. He is very reluctant to punish, but he will do it. He will unsheathe his sword, and he will smite, and none shall stand against the stroke. God did not fail at the end of the one hundred and twenty years to visit the guilty world, and he will not fail, when your iniquities are full, to visit you. If your ears refuse the language of his grace, as surely as there is a God in heaven, you shall be made to feel the power of his vengeance. Those who will not be covered by the wings of mercy, as a hen covers her chickens, shall see justice darting upon them as with the wings of an eagle. Power reigned in the world's creation, providence reigns in the world's preservation; mercyreigned in its redemption, but justice will reign in its condemnation. Remember this, then, unbelief will not, laugh as it may, remove one jot of the penalty.
The flood, like the destroying fire which will come upon ungodly men, was total in its destructiveness. It did not sweep away some of them, but all, and the punishments of God will not be to a few rebels, but to all. It will find out the rich in their palaces, as well as the poor in their hovels. Thesword of vengeance will not be bribed, neither will it be made quiet by prayers and entreaties; when it is once drawn out of the scabbard of mercy, it shall surely find the sinner, even though he seek sanctuary in the church of God, and lay hold on the horns of the altar by profession. He that is not washed in Jesus' blood, and covered with his righteousness, shall find the destruction of God to make no exceptions. It will be a destruction of the most awful kind. What a sight the angels must have seen as they saw the miserable men and women of that old world fleeing to the hills, and to the mountains, and to the tops of the craggy rocks, if possible to escape the ever-advancing flood. I shall not try to make your ears listen to their cries and their imprecations. Oh will it ever be your fate thus hopelessly to see the floodgates of divine vengeance drawn up, and the wrath of God, like flaming fire, let loose upon you and your fellow sinners?
Moreover, it was a final destruction. None out of the ark outlived the flood, every one perished; so shall it be when the wrath of God comes, it shall be eternal destruction from the glory of the Lord, and from the presence of his power. There is no hope for those with whom God deals in justice, no expectation, no, not a ray of hope can ever reach the gloomy chambers of their despair. Their death-knell is tolled, their prison house is fastened forever. God has turned the key in the lock and hurled that key into the abyss where even he will never find it to unlock and to unloose. The fetters of the damned are everlasting, the fires that burn about them never can be quenched, and their worm shall never die. O that men would take heed of this, and not wantonly incur that tremendous wrath of which the Scripture, if it speaks but sparingly, yet speaks most solemnly.
I am not of those who delight to dwell upon this subject. I have accused myself sometimes that I have so seldom spoken of the terrors of the law, that I have not entered into details with regard to the wrath to come, and the judgments that await the wicked. O let me urge you not to tempt the mercy of God, nor provoke his wrath, lest you should know in your own experience with a bitter and fearful knowledge far more than I either care to say to you this morning, or could say if I cared. Consider the old way which wicked men have trodden, and how they were swept away with the devouring flood.
The text gives us two pictures, and these two may suffice to bring out the meaning of Eliphaz. First, he says, they were "cut down before their time." The representation here is that of a tree with abundant foliage and wide spreading boughs, to which the woodman comes. He feels his axe, it is sharp and ready, and he gives blow after blow, until the tree begins to shake and quiver, and at last, leaning to the side to which it must fall, with a tremendous crash it falls headlong on the turf. Such is the sinner in his prosperity, spreading himself like a green bay tree; birds of song are among his branches, and his fruit is fair to look upon; but the axe of death is near, and where the tree falls there it must forever lie; fixed is its everlasting state. The crash which we hear in this world as the sinner dies, does but foretell to us his perpetual doom.
The other picture of the text is that of a building which is utterly swept away. Here I would have you notice that Eliphaz does not say that the flood came and swept away the building of the wicked, but swept away their very foundations. If in the next world the sinner only lost his wealth or hishealth, or his outward comforts of this life, it would be subject for serious reflection; but when it comes to this, that he loses his soul, his very self; when not the comfort of life, but life itself is lost - not the comforts of the mind, but the mind itself, oh! then, it becomes a thing to consider with all one's reason, and with something more of the enlightenment which God's Spirit can add to our reason. O that we would but be wise and think of this! May God grant that we may not run the risks of having the foundation of our hope, our comfort, our joy uptorn by an overwhelming torrent, and swept away every stone of it, while we poor fools who built on sand shall wring our hands with anguish to think that we would not take the warning and build on the rock while we might have done so.
III. And now our last word is THE WARNING of the text; and its warning seems to me to be summed up in the enquiry of everyone of us, "Am I or am I not treading in that broad way?" I would not like a hearer to go out of the place this morning without my having accosted him personally, as best I may while standing here, and put to him the question; Are you treading in the old way which wicked men have trodden? "Ah!" says one, "I do not know." Do you want to know? I will help you to answer it. Are you traveling in the narrow way in which believers in Christ are walking? "I cannot say that" say you. Well, then, I can tell you without hesitation that you are treading in the broad way, for there are but two ways, the one the way of mercy, that leads upward to the chambers of peace, and the other the way of sin, that leads down to the gates of hell. Be not deceived, there are no neutrals here. Christ's word is, "He that is not with me, is against me; and he that gathers not with me, scatters abroad." Do you say, "I take no part in this quarrel, I am not for God, and I am not against him"? No, then, out of your own mouth are you condemned. If you are not for God, who made you, then you have thrown off your allegiance and denied the rights of God to possess the creature which he himself has formed. You are in the wide and broad way!
The Lord help you! But if you can not answer the question, I will help you in another way. Friend, did you ever experience a great change? Are you a new man? If not, you are in the old way, for the way of nature for every one of us is the old way, and none ever run in the way of righteousness, but such as are renewed by the interposition of the Holy Spirit. "You must be born again. Except a man be born again from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Do I hear one say, "Then I trust I am changed, I trust I have come into the narrow way"? Brother, bless God for it this morning. Hang your head in shame to think you should have been in the broad road, but bless the grace which has taken you from it; and be sure to prove your gratitude by trying to rescue others. This very day as much as lies in you, tell the gospel of your salvation, that it may be the gospel of their salvation too. Have you bread to eat while others starve? Eat not your morsel alone. Have you light while others are in the dark? Lend them your candle; you shall see all the better for the loan. God help you dear brother, to prove by your life to others, that you love God, because you love your brother also.
As for you who confessedly are in the old way, would you turn, would you leave it? Then the turning point is at yonder cross, where Jesus hangs a bleeding sacrifice for the sons of men. Stop there, stay there! Look up and count the purple drops which flow from his dear head, and feet, and side, and if the Holy Spirit shall help you to say, "Jesus, accept me, wash me from my sin and take me to be your servant, and lead me in a right way, even the way everlasting," then it is done, and this very day you may go your way rejoicing. For the turning point is not a thing of months, weeks, and years, but rather of seconds, when the grace of God comes to work with man. My prayer is, that some who came in here today the serfs of Satan, may go out the Lord's free men, and that pilgrims in the way to ruin, may become travelers on the road to heaven, and God's be the glory. Amen.
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